*

which they were supposed to have given to the cause of revealed religion, than on that whole display-of elegance, with which they had refined our language-of† accuracy, with which they had unfolded the powers of the human mind-of clearness, with which they had exhibited the beauties and wonders of nature-or of § certainty, with which they had demonstrated its most abstruse and hidden laws?'-pp. 284, 285.

But we must abstain from any farther extracts; and perhaps have now done enough to give the reader a general idea of these discourses, and to enable him to judge that our character of them is sufficiently correct.

ART. V. Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811; containing Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo and Turkey. By John Galt. 4to, pp. 435. London; Cadell and Davies.

1812.

THERE is no species of writing on which we feel less disposed

to exercise any severity of criticism than books of foreign travel. Information is generally derivable from the worst of them, and, where that fails, the want of it is not unfrequently made up in amusement. For this we are so grateful, that we are unwilling to put a check upon the scribbling mania of travellers; and we are the more inclined to be lenient because we have reason to think that the dread of critical exposure has prevented the publication of the journals of some of our countrymen, which would have been a real acquisition to literature.

It was therefore, with any other idea than that of finding fault, that we opened the volume before us; and if we find ourselves compelled to use the language of censure, it is because we have seldom met with a work of the kind which it was less possible to commend. The trifling error of Serigo for Cerigo, in the title-page, indeed, led us to imagine that we had to do with no great clerk; but we thought that this defect, even in a voyage through Sicily and Greece, might have been abundantly compensated by a plain account of the actual state of things from a plain man; one who, spelling the names of places just as he heard them, might possibly describe the places themselves just as he saw them.

The first sentence of the preface strengthened our hopes.

This work' (Mr. Galt says) is part of a design which I had

• Addison.

t' Locke.

'Boyle.

§ 'Newton.

formed,

formed, of giving such an account of the countries connected with the Mediterranean, as would tend to familiarize them to the British public. It will appear sufficiently evident, in many places, that a great part has been printed from the original notes. I am not aware that this will be regarded as a fault, although it may expose me to the animadversions of verbal criticism. But I ought to apologize for publishing, unamplified, a number of remarks which were noted down as hints for dissertations. I was apprehensive that my book would have been enlarged without being augmented with information, and I would rather it were thought defective in disquisition than deficient in facts which suggest reflections." Classical inquiries formed no part of the objects of my journeys.' p. iv. This was well; and with such good intentions we could have excused the powπоV TYλauyes' which Mr. Galt prefixes to his volume under the title of the Mediterranean described, though communicating nothing new. But when he enumerates Persia as one of the countries to which the navigation by the Bosphorus and Black Sea affords a ready access, we presume that the mountainous and barren country which intervenes between the shores of the latter and the confines of Persia never occurred to him.

At Gibraltar, Mr. Galt seems to have been principally struck with what he calls the sinister appearance' of the Jews. There is, indeed, a sort of hint at a dissertation on the military establishment there which Mr. Galt does not think very expensive to the nation; and which might even be made a saving concern, by attending to his suggestions. Ceuta,' he says, should be made ours,' we suppose by taking it from our allies; we should then be effectually masters of the Straights; and then, as the British nation never refused the Sound duty to Denmark, why a toll should not be levied by us,' Mr. Galt is at a loss to understand.'

Sardinia being little visited, we pick up a few interesting facts touching the present state of the island. From this part of the narrative we shall extract what we conceive to be a very favourable specimen of Mr. Galt's style and manner.

The inhabitants of Sardinia' (I speak of the common people) ́ are yet scarcely above the negative point of civilization; perhaps it would be more correct to say that they appear to have sunk a certain way back into barbarism. They wear, indeed, linen shirts, fastened at the collar by a pair of silver buttons like hawk's bells; but their upper dress of shaggy goat skins is in the same savage style. A few have got one step nearer to perfectibility, and actually do wear tanned leather coats, made somewhat in the fashion of the armour worn in Europe in the fifteenth century.'

The state of society is probably not unlike what existed in Scotland about a hundred and fifty years ago. Family pride, a species of political scrophula, is in Sardinia particularly inveterate. But the exclusive spirit of the nobles begins to be counteracted by the natural

disposition

disposition of the sovereign to extend his own authority. Many parts of the country are in what a politician considers only as an unsatisfac tory state. In the district of Tempio this is greatly the case; the mountains are infested with banditti; and the villages are often at war with one another. A feudal animosity of this kind, which had lasted upwards of half a century, was lately pacified by the interference of a monk. The armies of the two villages, amounting each to about four hundred men, were on an appointed day drawn out in order of battle, front to front, and musquets loaded. Not far from the spot the monk had a third host prepared, consisting of his own brethren, with all the crucifixes and images that they could muster. He addressed the belligerents, stating the various sins and wrongs that they had respectively committed, and shewing that the period had arrived when their dispute should cease, for the account current of transgressions was then balanced. The stratagem had the desired effect, and a general reconciliation took place.'

The country is divided into prefectures. The prefect is a lawyer, and is assisted by a military commandant, who furnishes the forces required to carry his warrants into effect. This regulation has been made in the course of the present reign, and may be regarded as an important step towards the establishment of a public and regal authority over the baronial privileges. In the provinces justice is distributed by the prefects, whose functions seem to correspond in many respects with those of the Scottish sheriffs. When any particular case occurs in which the king considers it expedient to appoint a judge of the supreme court in the capital, on purpose to try the cause upon the spot, wherever this extraordinary justiciary passes, the provincial courts of justice are silent, and superseded by his presence.'

The Sards possess, in a great degree, the venerable savage virtue of hospitality. They are courageous, and think and act with a bold and military arrogance; but the impunity with which they may offend fosters their natural asperity. They are jealous of the Piedmontese, and, on this account, the king has not encouraged emigration from his late continental dominions to settle in Sardinia.

There is in Cagliari an institution worthy of being particularly noticed. It is formed for the purpose, as it were, of affording an opportunity to humble-born genius to expand and acquire distinction. The children of peasants are invited to come into the city, where they serve in families for their food and lodging on condition of being allowed to attend the schools of the institution. They are called Majoli, and wear a kind of uniform, with which they are provided by their friends. Some of the Majoli rise to high situations; the greater number, however, return back to the provinces and relapse into their hereditary rusticity; but the effect of their previous instruction remains; and, sometimes, in remote and obscure valleys the traveller meets with a peasant who, in the uncouth and savage garb of the country, shews a tincture of the polish and intelligence of the town.' pp. 8, 9, 10.

It is curious that Mr. Galt, who never fails to observe upon the evils

VOL. VII. NO. XIV.

Χ

evils consequent on ' priestcraft,' &c. should, in narrating the quarrel of the villages, take no notice whatever of the benign influence of the church in the prevention of evil. The good sense of the king in not encouraging emigration from his continental dominions, is worthy of our admiration, especially when his conduct in this respect is contrasted with that of his neighbour and companion in adversity, the King of Sicily.

Recurring to his own more immediate pursuits, Mr. Galt complains that, except the facilities voluntarily offered by Mr. Hill, our minister, nothing has been yet publicly done to encourage the British merchants to explore the abundant commercial resources of this island.' We do not exactly see what other public measures could, with advantage, be adopted, though Mr. Galt, without condescending even to hint upon what grounds such a measure is desirable, recommends a commercial treaty. We hear, however, of no competition in the Sardinian market which should make us particularly anxious for exclusive privileges; and, except in the articles of corn and wine, (the observations on which apply with tenfold force to Sicily,) the trade seems unrestricted. By Mr. Galt's own account, the Sards do not require much assistance from the manufactures of foreign countries; and, notwithstanding the warmth of the climate, and fertility of the soil, the exportable commodities of the island are not numerous.' We have no doubt that all this might be improved, nay, we have no doubt that, in spite of the numerous and ignorant nobility, and the ecclesiastical locusts,' the state of Sardinia is improving, and the demand for foreign productions gradually increasing; but a commercial treaty would, in our opinion, have as little effect in advancing the one or the other as, we fear, the revocation of the Orders in Council will have in relieving the distresses of our own manufacturers.

Mr. Galt lands in Sicily at Girgenti, and the flippancy and bad taste of his first observations would have been sufficient of themselves to prevent our forming any very agreeable anticipa tions of the rest of his voyage. He tells us that, although a few houses at the Mole should no more be considered as a fair specimen of the general domestic accommodations of Sicily than a fishing village in the neighbourhood of an ordinary English town would be of those of England, there were, nevertheless, such unequivocal indications of an hereditary disposition to filthiness that it was impossible to flatter myself with the hope of finding much comfort.'

A philosopher might regret that Mr. Galt should have neglected to explain the nature of those symptoms which, at once, mark the hereditariness of the malady: we allow the prevalence of the disease in Sicily, and always considered it there, as elsewhere, contagious;

but

but it required the nice taste of Mr. Galt to discover that it was hereditary in a race of men whom he now saw for the first time. As to comfort, if that ever was the object of any traveller before the present, then-all the passages, in which the vanity and dissatisfaction of human life are, in authors both sacred and profane, represented to us under figures derived from the idea of life itself being a journey, are ridiculous and unmeaning.

Of the antiquities of Agrigentum he thus speaks:

The temple of Concord is in fine condition, as an antiquary would say, the parts having been collected and replaced on each other by order of the king. The temple of Juno has been re-edified in the same manner. But still, even though they be the monuments of Agrigentum, the sight of them is hardly worth a Sabbath-day's journey. The church of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, is larger than both of them put together, and infinitely more magnificent.' p. 17.

After such an account of some of the most celebrated remains of antiquity, we were well satisfied with the propriety of Mr. Galt's not having made classical inquiries a part of the objects of his journies.' But for the great inaccuracies, however, in the facts, such as the re-edification of the temples, and their magnitude, we should not have been unwilling to acknowledge the happiness of his comparison of these ancient edifices to the church of St. Martin's in the Fields, as being eminently calculated to further his design of familiarizing to the British public the countries connected with the Mediterranean.'

The country between Girgenti and Palermo' is what a painter would probably call very beautiful, and a young lady romantic!' It is, however, (continues Mr. Galt,) really often savage, seldom pleasant, and altogether such as only necessity should lead me to pass again. Probably it wants the convenient inns, level roads, and opposition coaches which give such features of pleasantness to the run between Manchester and London.

With a rambling description of Palermo, are mixed a number of common-place observations on nobility, government, and the clergy in general. With regard to the latter, Mr. Galt's opinion is uniform; though it does not appear whether his dislike arises from an idea that the whole of religion is an imposture, or from the circumstance of his having been bred a presbyterian, and the clergy he meets with abroad belonging to episcopal churches.

In Sicily,' he says, with apparent satisfaction, as in other countries, the hierarchy has seen the best of its days.' The church having ceased to be regarded as venerable, is looked upon as ridiculous. An easy transition, by the way! Again: 'The institutions of the church are now generally estimated by their temporal utility; and, being found without value in this re